Francesca used to be a BUMC postdoc, recently she got a position as assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at BUMC, where she researches the molecular and genetic mechanisms of arterial stiffness and how to cure and prevent it. She also wrote an interesting post for the postdoc blog, enjoy!

About being a scientist

The Danish toy giant LEGO has recently grabbed media attention for the release of a new minifigure: the “scientist”. The little yellow brick wearing lab coat, glasses and a pen in the pocket looks cute and sharp; definitely not a mad, nerdy or evil scientist, as often portrayed in the collective imaginary (think Shelley’s Dr. Frankeinstein or Doc from the movie “Back to the Future”). Most of all, the “scientist” is female. As I dug deeper, I was surprised to discover that LEGO has been criticized in the past for gender bias and its previous attempts to market to girls found guilty of perpetuating the “pink and pretty” stereotypesof female representation. The new “lady scientist” may be, in part, an attempt to amend such gender bias accusations.

This came just a few months after yet another much debated release: the book “Leanin” from Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, in which the author encourages women to engage more in leadership roles in the workplace and blames them for not embracing their full potential. All the debateabout gender disparity in the American workforce and particularly in STEM careers(science, technology, engineering, mathematics) made me think: what does really take to succeed in science, independently if you are a guy or a girl? I asked myself this very question many years ago as a PhD (female) student when I was looking for sources of inspiration and directions about my future and my career. At that time, I came across a great book, “Advice for a young investigator” from the Spanish scientist Santiago Ramon y Cayal. According to the eminent neuroanatomist, hard work, passion for work, family and country, ambition, patience, humility, pursue of original data and master of the techniques are the qualities required to succeed in science. Most importantly, the idea of having to be exceptionally smart or genius, as sometimes scientists are envisioned in the popular perception, was not even mentioned in the book. Although the book was first published in 1897, the principles it promotes are timeless and universal and I reasoned that being successful in science boils down to willpower, self-motivation and perseverance, none of which, are gender-related qualities or restricted to STEM careers (a sport coach would probably have a similar piece of advice for young athletes as Ramon y Cayal had for young investigators).

In a recent trip to my home country, Italy, I went to renew my ID and the office clerk asked me what my profession was. To my surprise, the profession “scientist” was not in the list of choices although they had “academic researcher”, which is pretty close. Despite the profession of “the scientist” being somehow nebulous and elusive in Italy, growing up I never felt discouraged to pursue a STEM education and career and definitely not because of my gender. Now, as an early stage investigator, I come to appreciate how lucky I was to have teachers, family and mentors that rewarded perseverance and valued resilience as I was growing up. Those are the very qualities that, during my PhD and postdoctoral years, helped me to face failed experiments, long hours in the lab and many years of training at low pay. And probably these are the very same qualities that keep us scientists going these days in face of NIH spending cuts and low grant success ratesthat threaten to shut down our labs. Sure, STEM careers are tough but after all, the ideal of making an impact against human suffering, advancing knowledge and the satisfaction that comes from successful experiments, new discoveries, published articles and funded grants, make it all worth it. Despite the hardship and the challenges, science is creative, exciting and rewarding if you do not give up. And hopefully the little “scientist” LEGO figure will help to pull more young people into it.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/11/11/about-being-a-scientist/feed/0Dancing Sciencehttp://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/10/30/dancing-science/
http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/10/30/dancing-science/#commentsWed, 30 Oct 2013 14:59:42 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/?p=169The seminal and most hilarious (in my opinion) science dance video on you tube, is the one where a rather large group of students danced the prokaryotic translation on a football field at Stanford in 1971.
Since the 70s quite a lot of science themed dance videos were posted on youtube, or wherever they got posted before youtube. Sometimes they are part of biology classes in college and often hilariously bad.However dance and music are great ways to explain the basics of science to students who aren’t interested or have very little background. As for more complicated science: there is for example this great optical illusion, which really blurs the border between arts and science. And this video, which tries to explain the action potential by and to medical students via interpretive dance. Since the style is very similar to the original Stanford video, it can be assumed that they have at least been inspired be it.
There are also a couple of more professional science/music/advertising videos produced by large lab supply companies.
The “music videos of science” movement cumulates in the “Dance your PhD” contest which is held annually for the past 5 years and is sponsored by the AAAS. Last year’s competition included such diverse dances as the Generation of Haploid Stem Cells via Immaculate Conception with Ethanol to the tune of ‘I Get Knocked Down’ by Chumbawamba and Hydrogen Retention in Damaged Tungsten at High Surface Temperatures danced in a physics lab with great light effects. The winning video explained the formation of a superalloy using a mix of circus and silent movie. Entry into this year’s competition recently closed and the videos are now online. So if you have 30 minutes to spare have a look at them. I especially liked E.coli adapting to stress.
]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/10/30/dancing-science/feed/0Oskarhttp://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/10/25/oskar/
http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/10/25/oskar/#commentsFri, 25 Oct 2013 20:35:46 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/?p=158I have previously written about Oscar, recently I found out that there is also Oskar which is is involved in Drosophila embryonic development. Oskar is transcribed from maternal mRNA and absolutely crucial for establishing the anterior-posterior axis of the developing embryo by localizing the germ line cells at the posterior pole of the embryo.

The red stain in this picture is Oskar mRNA at the posterior pole of the oocyte. The protein Oskar keeps other posterior determinates, such as Staufen in the correct location.

Unusually enough, Oskar is not an acronym, the authors (R.Lehman and C. Nuesslein-Vollhard), who described the gene decided to name it Oskar after the main character of the novel “the tin drum” by G.Grass : Oskar, a little boy refuses to grow up and stays a pre-teen throughout the novel spanning 30 years. This is similar to a drosophila embryo that is missing Oskar, it will never develop past the embryonic stage of its life. The authors explicitly state their naming in the materials and methods section.

and then even cite the novel in their references.

The novel was later adapted into a movie which won an Oscar. Here is a picture of Oskar from the movie, he doesn’t look like a protein or an embryonic fly at all.

Women still unfortunately face many challenges in establishing a successful career in science. This article serves a timely reminder of these issues and also highlights a number of approaches which are being taken to increase the numbers of women in science and perhaps just as importantly to retain those who have had early career success.

A powerful Nature editorial highlighting the sexual harassment often faced by women scientists and the measures that should be taken to crack down on this. Written in response to a recent scandal at Scientific American blogs which resulted in some brave, honest and open blog posts on the subject, see:

An overview of Phase III trial results of GlaxoSmithKline’s RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine candidate. This vaccine has been in development for almost thirty years and although it is much less efficacious than standard childhood vaccines, it may have the potential to moderately reduce the overall burden of disease caused by malaria in parts of Africa and South East Asia.

The author elegantly describes our increasing understanding of the genetic basis of cancer due in large part to the introduction of new sequencing technologies, but also highlights the lack of drugs which are currently available to exploit this new knowledge.

A brilliant account of Kuru, the devastating and fatal prion disease which was first reported in Papua New Guinea in 1957. Research into this disease has resulted in the recognition of a new form of infectious disease, a Nobel Prize and was invaluable in enabling rapid research into the cause of CJD in the UK in the 1990s.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/10/24/popular-science-articles-something-for-everyone-part-ii/feed/1Is the media shaping us or do we shape the media?http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/09/26/is-the-media-shaping-us-or-do-we-shape-the-media/
http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/2013/09/26/is-the-media-shaping-us-or-do-we-shape-the-media/#commentsThu, 26 Sep 2013 15:26:38 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/bumcpostdocs/?p=60by Juliane

I often find the presentation of science and scientists in the media quite biased. This might be because I am female and for a long time have had a hard time seeing a person like myself portrayed in popular media. However, the presentation of scientists in the media can be an interesting reflection on how society perceives both our jobs, personalities and characters. Quite a few other people are interested in this too and in fact there even is a scientific journal for just this topic.

I don’t own a TV, instead I use Netflix. Following from that I am mostly interested in the presentation of science and scientists in movies and TV dramas.

Because of that, I was surprised when I came across this article by Jennifer Welsh. I admit that I didn’t know that Dancing With The Stars was still a thing. It is great that a scientist is considered to be a star (however, after 17 seasons they could just be desperate). However, he isn’t exactly a scientist. He isn’t doing any active scientific research; he promotes science and is doing a tremendous job in this difficult but so important and valuable field. He is funny, educational and perfectly fits into the stereotype of a scientist as described in the Draw-a-Scientist Test and promoted by the media whenever possible: an older, white man, who is a little eccentric. To paraphrase Jennifer Welsh, Bill Nye allowed dancing with the stars to reduce him to “a scientist”, not a human being who happens to work in science; so once again he is the face of science to the American public, the “SCIENTIST TM”.

The new hosts are a female solar researcher and a young astrophysicist. Unfortunately there are rumors that the show is to be cancelled. They haven’t lost many viewers in the last 8 months, but it seems that without the stereotypical scientist presenting, the BBC does not seem to believe in the show any more.

This is another example of how only older men with beards can possibly be wise enough to educate us about science.

Sometimes I do a Google image search for scientists; I am actually quite happy to see that about half of the scientists presented in the results are female.

Strangely enough, they all seem to be working in a molecular biology lab with colorful liquids. (colorful liquids are a topic for another time). However, there are still no pictures of minority scientists or scientists, who don’t actually do their research in a laboratory. The public perception of science is definitely changing, with women now featuring much more prominently. This is also seen in changing scores in the Draw-a-Scientist Test. But we are still a long way away from the public accepting us as a diverse group of normal people.

In the end, maybe we are only looking at it from our own perspective and need to collectively work much harder to convince the other side (media, public) to give ‘alternative’ scientists a chance.